ACLU's Filter Appeal Rejected

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ACLU's Filter Appeal Rejected

A federal judge in Boston has rejected the ACLU's request to reconsider his ruling in a case over the Cyber Patrol filtering software, setting the stage for a lengthy battle before an appeals court.

In March, U.S. District Judge Edward Harrington ruled against the civil liberties group, saying anyone with copies of a program that reveals Cyber Patrol's secret blacklist might have to take down their Web sites or face the consequences.

The ACLU asked him to temporarily exempt mirror sites from his order, but Harrington said in a curt three-paragraph ruling this week that he saw no reason to do so.

Harrington said that because the ACLU, which is representing three mirror sites, was not a party to the case, it had "no standing" to ask for a stay of his order.

Chris Hansen, an ACLU staff attorney, said his group will probably appeal Harrington's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

"Our clients want to speak. and they're being prevented from speaking," Hansen said. "When a court issues an injunction prohibiting speech, it seems to us that it's a somewhat urgent matter."

The ACLU, which is representing three mirror sites, has already appealed the remainder of Harrington's decision.

In that three-page order, Harrington wrote that it was a good thing that parents could block the Web sites of "the purveyors of pornography and the merchants of death and violence."

"Ideas bear consequences, fruitful and also destructive," Harrington wrote. "The pernicious idea that all men are not created equal is the philosophic basis which incites the degradations of slavery and the genocidal slaughter of the Holocaust."

Parents, he wrote, have the right to "screen and, thus, prevent noxious and insidious ideas from corrupting their children's fertile and formative minds."

He said Mattel should serve the order on defendants and anyone in active concert or participation with them by certified mail to the last known address.

A U.S. resident who violates Harrington's order could be subject to fines or imprisonment for contempt of court.